Unshackle the mainland media
China's appalling record in press freedom has again made international headlines. Apart from being the country that has locked up the largest number of journalists, Beijing has been working overtime to crack down on the news media.
The nine-month detention of Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based journalist who works for The Straits Times of Singapore, has attracted widespread concern. Last week, it was revealed that Ching's case had been passed to the prosecutors' office in Beijing last month.
Lawyers hired by The Straits Times are not allowed to see him, and Ching's fate is still unknown. His family, friends and supporters in Hong Kong are deeply worried. Earlier, some people had optimistically hoped that he would be allowed to rejoin his family before the Lunar New Year. All members of The Frontier hope he will be released soon.
At around the time that Ching's case was transferred to the People's Procuratorate, the authorities in Beijing dismissed the editor of the Beijing News, one of China's most popular and liberal newspapers. The editor, Yang Bin , and deputy editors Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were dismissed on December 28 as part of what media watchdog groups describe as a sweeping government campaign to tighten control over the media and the internet.
In a rare protest against the official crackdown, about 100 journalists from the newspaper went on strike. Later it was reported that Yang had been transferred to work in Shenzhen and the two deputy editors reinstated. The show of solidarity by the journalists should be commended. In a country where independent, critical reporting can mean a one-way ticket to prison and may implicate friends and relatives, their courage was remarkable and encouraging. The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters without Borders condemned the purge at the Beijing News and noted that editors at other mainland newspapers that tackled sensitive subjects had also been purged. There was speculation that Beijing News' sharply critical editorials on official corruption and poor government decision-making had angered leaders in Beijing.
The purge of editors and journalists has dashed hopes that an era of media freedom would begin when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao took power in early 2003. It was encouraging when Mr Hu called on the media to play a more active watchdog role in the battle to combat widespread official corruption and government inefficiency. However, by the end of 2003, Mr Hu had begun a campaign to suppress the media. The purge of the mainland news media is not widely reported in the Hong Kong media. This is not surprising: many local news media organisations have increasingly practised self-censorship in order to ingratiate themselves with Beijing.